Hellfire Landing

UK.

Chapter One

This story begins in an office system located in London’s Downing Street, SW1A 2AA. Downing Street is located in Whitehall in Central London, a few minutes’ walk from the Houses of Parliament and a little farther from Buckingham Palace. The street was built in the 1680s by Sir George Downing (c.1623-84) on the site of a mansion called Hampden House. The houses on the west side of the street were demolished in the nineteenth century to make way for government offices, now occupied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Downing Street has for over 200 years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the UK, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an office held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister’s official residence is 10 Downing Street; the Chancellor’s official residence is next door at Number 11. The government’s Chief Whip has an official residence at Number 12, though the current chief whip’s residence is at Number 9.

The office nicknamed the Cab in Downing Street is the worldwide communication hub, the listening and watching centre of the UK and the world. It monitors events in real time and analyses what happens within the government minute by minute. The office is staffed and maintained twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The Cab has five persons working on three shifts with a weekly change-round. Three listeners have headphones and operate complex workstations, which they can access with their own logic key together with their fingerprints via a complex log-in system. A fourth person acts as a replacement to allow stand-down break times. That person, the controller, sits behind and above the listeners, who constantly monitor several screens on the wall. The controller can direct a listener’s viewing to any of the screens; he is in control of the viewing patterns. The controller also looks for any problems that may arise and deals quickly with them. The fifth person sits next to the controller and has direct access through the phone and radio systems to the emergency services. He will inform the controller if a happening on any screen is being dealt with by any of the emergency services.

There are three other persons, intermediaries who control the flow of information to and from the Prime Minister’s office and other government departments. They ensure that data obtained by the office is passed on to the relevant departments. They are in a separate office from the main Cab room, but they can see into the Cab office through a thick, double-glazed, large, one-way window. They also have sound communication with the controller, but this is one-way. The controller cannot hear or see any persons in the room behind him. Also the controller and the listeners have their own workrooms and toilet facilities. When entering or leaving the building, they can only go to their own designated work areas; they cannot bump into or commutate with any other person.

All the information received via television, satellite, phone, Internet and radio is constantly electronically recorded, together with automatic backup on several servers located in different departments. This information is logged and saved as read-only, and cannot be changed, saved or printed without prior clearance. The storage servers are themselves backed up automatically via multiple fireproof cable links in a vast array of fireproof rooms, called the dungeons, located deep underground in a nuclear bunker. This bunker can only be accessed using multiple access codes and secret protocol knowledge. The access method is under constantly review and personnel are frequently changed as a security measure.

The Prime Minister’s principle personal secretary has access to all the offices and can visit at any time to ensure all is well. He is the one who decides whether or not to contact the Prime Minister immediately - which could mean get him out of bed in an emergency. The principle personal secretary is contacted whenever it is felt that a happening might be important. The controller has a red button he can use if necessary to alert the Prime Minister’s secretary in his office. A pulsing sound and flashing light will continue until the Prime Minister’s secretary flicks his cancelling switch. This will also inform the intermediaries’ office that the panic alert had been received. The secretary will then quickly go to the intermediaries’ office rather than spend time responding by phone.

There are three persons designated as the Prime Minister’s secretary, and this is to ensure that there is always one on duty. At times, the Prime Minister’s principle secretary may accompany him when he leaves Downing Street for any function. The principle secretary is in close communication with the duty secretary at Downing Street and is regularly updated and informed of any issues that might need immediate attention by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will immediately change his schedule if a more important issue needs his urgent attention.

In the intermediaries’ office communication with the controller takes place using a speaker system. To ensure that information is not lost by lack of attention, it is automatically recorded and can be instantly repeated. This is particularly useful in an emergency when only one person or no persons are in the office when communication is received..

In the Cab office at 5 p.m. one Tuesday, data was being logged that there had been a plane crash at London’s Heathrow Airport. The information was coming from the emergency services and the media, but as yet there were few details. The controller notified the intermediaries.

The intermediaries discussed the information and decided not to inform the Prime Minister’s secretary. They asked the controller to ensure that the listeners were focused on relaying information as soon as it appeared. They were aware that the facts would become clearer when the media circus arrived at Heathrow with their satellite vans and started transmitting on-scene information.

At five thirty the emergency services reported difficult access to Heathrow because of traffic. There was complete gridlock, and it was requested that media helicopters be allowed airspace over the area. Soon the media circus had a helicopter in the air and film was being relayed showing a scene of total confusion. Ambulances and fire engines were trying in vain to get through. As word got round, the traffic situation became chaotic. The normal rush-hour traffic was increased by sightseers converging on the road system around Heathrow.

The media helicopter was also transmitting pictures of flames and a rising plume of waving black smoke inside the airport, but the helicopter was still too far away to show clearly what had happened.

The Prime Minister’s principle secretary now entered the intermediaries’ office and he said, I was watching the television in my room. Is any further information available? I am not sure if I should yet bother the Prime Minister.

The intermediaries switched on the television receiver in their office just in time to watch as a media helicopter moved into the airspace above Heathrow.

John, what the hell are they doing? They know they are not supposed to enter that area. That is restricted airspace for a very good reason.

Well, I don’t know, secretary. I expect they are trying to get closer to the accident scene so as to get the best possible pictures.

That may be so, but the downdraft from the rotor blades could fan the flames and make matters even worse. Also they could get in the way of a plane trying to land or take off as well as any emergency personnel trying to get to the scene. John, contact MP [Metropolitan Police Control Centre] at Scotland Yard, and tell them to get those idiots out of that area. Tell them to arrest the paper’s editor if they have to.

(All 999 phone calls made in the London area go straight to Scotland Yard, which then establishes contact with the control room of the relevant police force. The local police force then takes control using its local radio system. Written details of the incident is faxed from Scotland Yard to the local force for them to log. MP also monitors the local police radio networks, and if the situation requires assistance from other forces or special units, like CO19, the firearms response unit, they then ask the attending police patrol car to switch their in-car radio to another band so they can deal with them direct and bypass the local radio connection. They can also instruct that patrol car to abandoned the call as it is being dealt with by others. This could happen if the arrival of a police patrol would be detrimental to the situation in hand.)

Wow! Too late, secretary! The media helicopter has now crashed. It has smashed into the ground, down in flames and with massive carnage.

Jesus Christ! My God, John, what happened? Did you see what caused that?

It was so quick. It just burst into flames and fell out of the sky. It crashed into the ground and disintegrated all over the place. Another camera recorded the disaster from some way away, outside the airport perimeter, probably from on top of one of those vans the media use.

Oh well, at least they now have got a good picture to show on the television. I mean, they missed the plane crashing (if that is what happened) and now they seem to have made a crash of their very own.

Poor devils, secretary! I can’t see anybody surviving that. I don’t know how many were on board, but I am sure some families won’t be having Daddy or Mummy home for tea tonight.

You’re right. It’s sickening when you think. And now we have lost the only aerial coverage we had. Is there nothing more yet?

No, secretary. Until we get a camera inside the airport we shan’t have any details of what has happened or how many casualties there are. The helicopter deaths have increased the tally - let’s hope we don’t have any more now.

Well, I will go and bring the Prime Minister up to date so he is not too in the dark. Let me know if there are any more developments.

John, what’s happened? I had only just got back to my office. What’s the alert? What has happened?

Updates have just come through from MP at Scotland Yard. They have lost contact with their unit at Heathrow. They think that plane crash is probably more serious than first thought and it has probably hit and demolished, or damaged, part of Terminal 5 and/or its satellite buildings. That’s the terminal where they have a spanking-new operations room. An off-duty police constable phoned in and let them know. We thought it was serious enough to push the red button.

You are right, John. I’d better inform the Prime Minister. It looks like the casualty list could be high. Make sure the listeners are focused on the emergency services - the ambulance and hospital services will probably give the best information.

John, that certainly took the smile off his face. The secretary sure looked glum, to say the least.

Probably he is working out that his yearly weekend in Scotland could now be cancelled. What does he actually do in Scotland, then? Is it something special, by any chance?

Special, yes, to him. He goes up this time every year and walks on the wild side. He stays at some old Scottish inns and drinks the local-made moonshine. He enjoys it so much and comes back with a big smile. Old Jock, the cook in the kitchen, told me he does the same a bit later in the year, and Jock comes from the area the secretary visits. Jock has relatives still living there; they tell him what the Prime Minister gets up to, but the secretary doesn’t know about Jock or what he knows - nudge, nudge. You know, John, there seems to be something making my bones itch - this Heathrow business, I mean. If they have a crash, they are all geared up to cope with the situation. If a plane’s hit a terminal, that is just a small area; you would think we would be getting information from the other terminals. It seems too quiet - very much too quiet for my liking.

Yeah, I can see what you are saying, but give it a thought for a minute. Those planes carry a lot of fuel - some 50,000 gallons. Back in the old days the planes used to dump any fuel they had on board before they landed, but now it’s different. Because of the cost they don’t dump any excess. It depends if it was a short- or long-haul flight how much it landed with, but the fuel could have sprayed over a large area so you could be looking at fires everywhere. They could be spending all their time and energy trying to contain them. Then you could also have a few hundred casualties to look after as well.

Yes, I see what you mean. We have not had a big crash area before inside the airport. Remember that one back in the seventies, when that plane, that Trident, came down after take-off just a couple of miles from the perimeter. That seemed big at the time, and the emergencies services had trouble getting there because of sightseers, but that didn’t cause any problems in the airport. Also when that one came down in Southall the airport was missed. I think Lockerbie is the biggest plane crash I can remember and that made a big hole in the ground, but it only damaged a few houses. Let’s hope the Heathrow one is not any bigger. It’s a bit too close to home. Regarding what you were saying about the fuel dumping, many years ago a friend lived under the flight path on the Windsor side and he was always complaining about his car being covered in sticky stuff. At first he thought it was sap from the trees in the road, but then he found out it was caused by the fuel the planes were dumping.

Blimey O’Reilly! We have a lot more verbal going on now. It seems to be coming from all directions - coming from everywhere thick and fast.

Yeah, I forgot about them. You don’t think about all those passengers stuck up in the clouds with nowhere to go. Some of them must have been going round for a while, and some of the planes could be getting low on fuel. They’ll be getting desperate to land somewhere, but they can’t land until the runway is clear and safe.

I wonder how many are waiting to land. They say one lands and one takes off every minute, so sixty planes every hour, and we are - what? - three hours since the initial crash. There could be over a hundred planes now looking for somewhere to land, and more will be joining the queue every minute. Has anything been done to divert them to other airports? This is going to cause widespread chaos. There will be planes sitting on runways in foreign countries which can’t take off because there is nowhere to land in the UK.

"That’s right. I know we have quite a few airports scattered